WARNING: There are spoilers ahead for the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.

SHIELD

SHIELD is back and it’s been a long time coming. Since Phil Coulson stepped into Tony Stark’s life and announced he was with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, SHIELD was with us. From Mjolnir crashing down into the New Mexico desert to the Chitauri invading New York, SHIELD was a cornerstone of the MCU, the glue that held all these films and shows together. Since SHIELD fell at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, its absence has been felt. Coulson is no longer there to banter with Tony Stark or man-crush on Steve Rogers. Nick Fury, save for a bit part in Age of Ultron, isn’t around to rally everyone together at the last the moment. A large part of the MCU got relegated to television on Tuesday nights, never to be seen or heard from again on the big screen.

Now SHIELD is officially a government agency, so will its status in all parts of the MCU change? My hope is that it will. While ditching SHIELD deep into the Potomac River was a great story, it’s time to bring it back into the fold, and bring back Samuel L. Jackson while we’re at it.

The Inhumans and the Watchdogs

I’m not ashamed to admit that I got a little excited at the start of this episode when it looked like some Inhumans were revolting against non-Inhumans. In the past couple of years, there has been thinkpiece upon thinkpiece on how the Inhumans are replacing mutants in the MCU. With Marvel Studios not having the rights to the X-Men and other related property, there is always someone wondering how that hole will be filled in the MCU. Imagine my excitement when it looked like were getting to see the beginnings of the Brotherhood of Evil Inhumans tonight. Alas, that wasn’t the case.

What we did get was an attack from the Watchdogs on a scale we have yet to see. Until now, the Watchdogs have been a domestic terrorist group, a KKK meets the Minutemen but slightly sanitized for primetime television. Now they’ve gone global with the help of Senator Rota Nadeer. We don’t know much about this woman, but she’s vehemently anti-Inhuman and she has an Inhuman brother who may have died during Terrigenesis. That would be enough for any person to lash out at those they blame for their misfortunes, but a Senator has contacts and resources. It allows for the story be one of intrigue, something that worked well for Marvel with The Winter Soldier and should work well here.

Favorite Scene

The fight between the Watchdogs and SHIELD was amazing. If there’s one thing Marvel Television does well, it’s single-shot fight scenes. I haven’t tried pinpointing for sure when this happened, but I think it was that outstanding hallway scene in season one, episode two of Daredevil. Then Daisy had a single-shot fight scene in season two of Aos. Now it’s become a tradition and I love it.